The Bling of the Ancients 61
If you think hip-hop stars like Flavor Flav started the craze of jewel-studded teeth, you'd be wrong. A new study shows that Native Americans were using sophisticated dentistry techniques to add bling to their smiles 2,500 years ago. These ancient people used notches, grooves, and semiprecious gems to beautify their teeth. According to the study, the dentistry was for purely cosmetic purposes. "They were not marks of social class," says José Concepción Jiménez, an anthropologist at Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History.
Re:"They were not marks of social class" (Score:5, Informative)
I am going to guess you never tried coke in college.
That fun powder is made from coca leaves which would be fine for numbing teeth for dental work.
Social class means different things to an anthropologist. He most likely means that this form of decoration was not reserved for a privileged group, such as chiefs, witchdoctors or priests. It may well have only been the better off tribesmen doing, but it was not restricted to one class or another.
Re:"They were not marks of social class" (Score:5, Informative)
And he knows this HOW?
One of the great things about New World archeology is that so little is known that it's easy for experts to project their hopes, dreams and fears onto their finds.
Because we have a reasonable idea of what was going on in Europe and Asia and Africa 2500 years ago anyone suggesting the use of cosmetic dentistry for reasons other than expression of social class, wealth, power, etc would be laughed at. But our ignorance of New World peoples is vast, so they make a convenient armature to hang Euro-centric notions of "noble savages" and "peaceful kingdoms" on.
For example, the Inca--now known to be a violent, war-making civilization that was structured into an oppressive aristocracy over a downtrodden peasantry--were once believed to be entirely peaceful and relatively egalitarian. That was back in the '50's when global war was a great fear, and the myth of a "classless society" was still widely believed.
Those false beliefs eventually yielded to fact, particularly translation of the Incan language. Today, though, if you ask an "expert" what the Inca were worried about toward the end of their empire, they'll be apt to tell you with a straight face, "climate change, soil erosion, ecological degradation..." Whereas the honest answer is, "We don't have a clue. Who knows what people whose entire conceptual universe is still barely comprehensible to us were thinking. Probably that they had displeased the gods somehow because things kept getting worse, but even that's just a guess."
We do know there are some constants in human society. All societies have adultery, for example, and all societies have some form of conspicuous consumption or other flagrantly wasteful behaviour that is used as a marker of class, power, wealth, etc.
When a novel social phenomenon is found in an otherwise little-understood or little-known society, it is a good bet that it'll have something to do with one of those basic, common things. At least we have good reason to believe that they existed, rather than positing that a difficult and dangerous ornamental display is for the first time ever anywhere not related to expressing the social class, power, wealth, etc of the individual involved.
Re:"They were not marks of social class" (Score:2, Informative)
And he knows this HOW?
It takes two to do this, the ersatz Dentist and the willing patient.
The Patient needed to endure a lot of pain, no Novocain in those days, and no one would go thru this, and no one would PRACTICE this Medicine or Magic (as the case may be) without some perceived social benefit.
How can one say 2500 years after the fact that these were not marks of a Social Class? It seem far more likely the anthropologist's understanding of the social class structure is seriously flawed.
You didn't read the one-page article, did you?
I'm quoting directly from it:
But it's clear that peopleâ"mostly menâ"from nearly all walks of life opted for the look, noted José ConcepciÃn Jiménez, an anthropologist at the institute, which recently announced the findings.
"They were not marks of social class" but instead meant for pure decoration, he commented in an e-mail interview conducted in Spanish.
In fact, the royals of the dayâ"such as the Red Queen, a Maya mummy found in a temple at Palenque in what is now Mexicoâ"don't have teeth decorations, Jiménez said.
Other evidence of early Mesoamerican dentistryâ"including a person who had received a ceremonial dentureâ"has also been found.
Knowledgeable Dentists
The early dentists used a drill-like device with a hard stone such as obsidian, which is capable of puncturing bone.
"It's possible some type of [herb based] anesthetic was applied prior to drilling to blunt any pain," Jiménez said.
So we have a reasonably sophisticated practioner who has well-developed tools appropriate for dental work. One paragraph further down in the article after this quotation suggests that they had reasonably good knowledge of dental anatomy and function. For the day, I'd put good money they were that society's dentists, rather than an "ersatz dentist." They were, indeed, dentists.
Also, we have speculation that an herb based (read: coca based) anesthetic would have been used. Knowing how painful drug-free dentistry can be, therefore how motivated people would be to find alleviation from said pain, and knowing the ready availability of an excellent anesthetic, I am reasonably certain that while perhaps not without discomfort, it was a relatively pain-free operation.
Now, as to knowing whether precious stones on your teeth convey social status, read the quote from the article carefully. That assertion came from an email interview conducted in Spanish. While the author of the study, based on his name and professional affiliation might well be assumed to speak Spanish fluently, the author of the linked article's name is John Roach. Although names don't give complete information, it is a fair guess that Spanish is less likely to be his first language. Reading the quoted article, it seems a better interpretation might be that tooth modifications were a counter-indicator of royal or ruling social class. Just as we have in present-day society. Yes, it conveys a particular social class, and perhaps even an increased relative social status, but not necessarily high social status on an absolute scale. I can readily imagine that subtleties of that kind of assertion would be lost in email, when the language of communication is not primary, and especially when the information is being condensed into a 350-word summary.
More-or-less when you think of accusing someone who is a professional academician that their understanding of something smack-dab in their field is, "seriously flawed," when you are not a fluent practitioner in the field, you should stop and reconsider. There are probably more reasonable explanations than an expert in the field has a basic assumption wrong, and, after a mere 30 seconds of contemplation, you have profound insight that they never considered.